Audition Script | What's Left At Zero

Vignette: "Marlowe, Go For Launch"

Read for one role or all three, whatever you'd like to submit. Direction
notes are in italics above each line; they're only meant to be a starting point (I've never done this before)

CAPCOM: Male

Mission control. Calm, procedural, unhurried. Nothing here is the first
time he's said it.

Countdown call-outs (read as a continuous sequence, evenly paced)

Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

Cabin configuration

Marlowe, copy: visor down, four-point restraints, O2 to primary. Confirm cabin config.

Comm check

Marlowe, comm check. We read you five by five. You are go for launch on our mark.

Recording: Female

Heard as a static-laced tape recording, not a live voice. Something
started and abandoned. She runs out of nerve.

...I keep starting this the same way. I keep stopping at the same word. I wanted to tell you—

Marlowe — Female (lead)

The pilot. Quiet, controlled, a little worn. Running through procedure
to keep from sitting with what's underneath it. Delivery shifts line to
line: some are pure focus, some are memory pulling her under mid-sentence.

Pressure gauge (focus)

Pressure holds exactly where it should. I built a career on numbers that behave.

Photograph (memory, self-lying)

It's just a picture.

Ring mark (personal)

Stupid thing messed up a perfectly good glove.

Radar screen (focus)

Empty sky, one blip, dead centre. First time in years the whole world agrees where I am.

Breathing (neutral, grounding)

In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. My body remembers this better than I do.

Window reflection (personal)

My own face where the sky should be. That's alright, it can go first.

Hull settling (fear, held in check, just seeping through)

The hull ticks and settles, no good reason I can think of. I think I'll call it patience.

Zero (intimate. The last word of the vignette, and the final word of the countdown, an internal thought)

Zero.